We are excited to announce that this year's Users Roundtable will be held at the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino in Las Vegas - located on the strip. Notice the date is in September this year instead of June. We hope you will be able to join us. Please let Linda Schmidt know if you are planning to attend so we can get an idea on the number to plan for. Her contact information is lschmidt@cardwellgroup.com or 800-395-1410.

We have reserved a block of rooms and would like to add you to the rooming list. The rooms will be $89 per night plus taxes. (This includes the $20 per night resort fee, which covers: in room internet, fitness center access, two daily in-room Keurig coffee pods, two daily bottles of water, daily newspaper, local and toll-free calls, copying, faxing, and Board pass printing.)

We will be hosting a dinner the evening before the Roundtable and we hope you will plan your travel so you can join us!

The Roundtable will be from 8:00 – 5:00 on Thursday and until noon on Friday. It includes a continental breakfast both mornings and lunch on Thursday.

Each company receives one complimentary attendance to the Users Roundtable. (Additional attendees will be charged a minimal fee of $200 to cover meals and materials.)

We will be using our time at the Connections Online Users Roundtable getting your feedback on what you need, and hearing best practice presentations. We will update you to new functionality on Version 4.1 and share our new performance management module.

Past attendees have said that they find the networking with other customers invaluable. They also have enjoyed and learned new and creative ways to incorporate Connections Online into their own Connections process. We are looking to unveil updated functionality to the software. It will be a time to meet old friends and make new ones… We hope you will join us!

Secure Sypher - Related Links SiteBy popular demand, file uploads directly into Connections Online related links are now possible with Secure Sypher. For $45 per month, your entire Connections Online site can upload and store up to 20 GB of files that are kept secure; User level of security is based on your Connections Online page security settings. A video walk-through of setup and usage is available on YouTube. Click here for the video. Links for more information and to sign up can be found on your Connections Online site admin page or by visiting https://secure.sypher.com.

Archiving in Connections Online Version 4.1

On the Site Admin page, request an Archive. Over the evening hours, it makes a full archive of the site. There are 3 ways to access archives:

1. From the Site Admin page in Version 4.1, click on the archive you want to view.

2. In Version 4.1, click the Archive icon on the right next to the Sign Out button. It will open the last accessed Archive, or ask you to pick one, and then take you to the current item that you are viewing, if it exists in the archive.

Users can use the Archive site just like the regular site, except everything is read-only. The Archive site is colored differently than Version 4.1 so Users aren't confused about which version they are viewing. The current Archive information, date/time, description and the database name, are located on the right hand side in a bright orange box.

The limitations of the archiving are only 1 per day per site and also administrators must plan ahead for the Archive to be executed in the evening. It is not immediate like the current archive as it is too large of a process to run during production hours.

Note: Please do not archive frequently as this feature is NOT meant to be a backup process where you need to archive every day for disaster recovery. We still have our nightly and monthly backups for those purposes.

Tips and Additional Help Documentation for the Month

Feature Change – Please Note:

Project Linking- Please NOTE as this has changedThe name and dates cannot now be changed on the linked project. The rest of the fields in the linked project’s top edit form CAN be changed on the linked project (color, status, phase, tracking field, can be changed on the linked project.) If the name or date changes on the original project, the changes will appear on the linked project.

Example: Project is originated by Org AProject from Org A is linked to Dept BDept B cannot change the name or the dates on the linked project, but CAN change the other information (color, status, phase, tracking field - Dept B can also “move” the linked project). When Org A changes the name and or dates of the original project, that change will show in the linked project on Dept B.

MS Project Connector – Please NOTE as this has changed We have fixed the security so Users can use the MS Project Connector without having Administrator Security rights. However, Users will need to download and install the latest versions from http://www.connectionsonline.net/projectconnector.html. If the User has a previous version, they will have to uninstall the previous version, and download and install the new version. It checks security before a synchronization is done and will alert you if you don’t have the proper security.

The User will need to have security in the Connections Online project to create, read, update, and delete on the tasks. The security is only enforced in COL so it doesn't prevent you from deleting in MS Project and you can't have tasks missing on one side and keep the ranking correct. Basically, anything you can change in Project needs to have security be available to you in COL. The good thing is you can always use the undelete feature if a task is deleted by someone erroneously.

On the Project security page, there are Default Settings for the Project Tasks module. The person needs to be added there with full access and then have it propagated to all tasks on that project. This is part of giving full access to the project, but since it has to be propagated, we are explaining it separately. If there aren't tasks yet, they would still need to be added there with Create at minimum so any tasks added in the MSP file will be able to sync over.

So the steps to take for Projects already in COL before syncing to MS Project would be:

1. Give User/Group full security to the COL Project.

2. Give User/Group full security, including Create, in Project Tasks default security, and propagate to all tasks.

For new Projects that are coming from a MS Project file that hasn't been synced before:

Once the new project is synced for the first time into COL, any User/Group who will then be syncing to it (except for the person who did the initial import) will need to be added through the 2 steps for Projects already in COL.

Users don't have to be on the Project Team. However, if they are on the team in a role that has full security already, you won’t have to go through and add them to the security again as themselves or as a part of another group. Team Leader usually has full security by default in the application, so people in that role wouldn't have to go through the steps for Project/Task security.

Downloading ChartsThe following is a way to download charts from our application. If you open the metric page, you will see the chart and you can download it as an image file. You can download as a PNG image, a JPEG image, a PDF document or a SWG vector image. To download, click on the button below in the circled item.

Please have your Users use the new URL (link above). The beta version will still be accessible but will be used by our development team to test upcoming features. The 4.1 (COL URL) will use your production database (so you may have users on col.connectionsonline.net, beta.connectionsonline.net, and my.connectionsonline.net). We would like all users to use the URL https://col.connectionsonline.net and if you need (or want) to use 4.0 for any reason, you will see a link at the bottom of the page to open 4.0. We invite you to attend a scheduled 4.1 webinar (see webinar registration below). You will see that we have improved the efficiency of entering data by reducing the number of clicks to create and update the information in Connections as well as other improvements.

Note: Although we would like people to start using Version 4.1, Version 4.0 will continue to be available for use. There is a link at the bottom of the Connections page where you can switch to the other version.

If you know someone outside of your company who may be interested in learning more about Connections Online, we have an informational webinar scheduled on Tuesday, June 25th at 1:30 ET or Monday, July 29th at 1:30 ET. Please pass this link on to them to register for the:June 25th webinar - https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/267454362